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Posts Tagged ‘foreign law’

The requirement for proving foreign law via expert evidence, and a presumption of similarity to lex fori in the absence of such evidence, has been trite law for some time. However, as the decision of Mr. Justice Matsuhara in Seidel v. Telus Communications Inc.,2008 BCSC 933 shows, at least part of this triteness is that no one has bothered to assail this proposition. In Seidel, the plaintiff, seeking the court’s conclusion that the law of Quebec on the subject of arbitration and certification of class action proceedings was substantially different from that of BC, argued that expert evidence on the law of Quebec is unnecessary and inadmissible. She argued that the court was qualified to consider Quebec law, particularly its statutory scheme, without additional help.

Unsurprisingly, the court disagreed with this assertion. Instead, it proceeded to analyze the question of admissibility via the principled approach to expert evidence from R. v. Mohan, focusing on necessity. The court took into account that foreign law has traditionally been proven by expert evidence, that Quebec law, under its civil tradition, is statutory; that under s. 24(2)(e) of the B.C. Evidence Act,the court must take judicial notice of statutes of other provinces; and that a judicially noticed fact is not open to rebuttal (R. v. Spence). The resolution of this dilemma lay in the conclusion that there is a difference between judicially noticing the existence of a foreign statute, and receiving expert evidence on its meaning and effect within that legal system. As Matsuhara J. concluded at para. 24:

It would be audacious of me to conclude that simply because I can read the translations of the provisions of the Civil Code I have the capacity to fully understand and interpret the meaning of such provisions. In other words, this is information that is “outside of the experience the trier of fact”, which makes expert evidence necessary.

As a not-so-long-ago law student, I find that it is always useful to find a case expounding on an otherwise trite principle of law and confirming its validity via principled analysis.